Star Trek Original Series

Recently, I’ve been watching some episodes of Star Trek the Original Series (TOS). After slowly working our way through Deep Space 9 (DS9) over the course of five or so years R and I finally finished a few months ago, so we were looking for something else to watch. The overlap in our tastes is somewhat small, which can make it tricky to pick something.

Around the time we finished DS9, Strange Horizons published an essay titled Kirk Drift which talked about how perceptions of TOS were based on exaggerated ideas, and reading that made me want to see TOS series for myself. It’s a series that I’d always been aware of (my mother was fan – she got her first color TV to watch Star Trek re-runs on) but had never seen. I was content to learn about via pop culture before reading “Kirk Drift."

Still, I wasn’t quite willing to watch the whole thing, so I asked R to help me pick 15 or so episodes to watch. I really wanted to see “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “Spock’s Brain” (I know it’s widely regarded as terrible but my mother loves it). On the other hand, I refuse to watch “City on the Edge of Forever” because I hate Harlan Ellison; he’s a bad person, and I’ve never liked anything of his that I read. Other than that, R mostly picked episodes based on what he thinks is good or historically important or just something I’d like.

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